During this decade, Federico Ríos recorded the lives of different fronts of the FARC, in an investigation that took him throughout most of the country, reaching remote regions and villages that do not exist on the maps: “Each trip was an uncertainty, each trip was a trail” he recalls, and on the back of a mule, chiva bus and canoe, reached the communities that suffered the absurdity of war.
Federico Ríos recorded the lives of different FARC fronts, in an investigation that took him to almost cross the entire country…
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This exhibition is unconventional, as we are rarely invited to review so many images, they allow us to get to know in depth a photography defined mainly by light. It appears through the intricate nuances of the jungle, evidencing the facts, making them – literally – visible and while the day is an occasion to examine the order within the chaos in the vegetable exuberance, the night is a reason to take full advantage of the chiaroscuro. All this driven by an inner vision and an overflowing curiosity for the human being, where is present the archetype or simplification of something : a path, a bed, a house; and the recurrence of habits: sailing, patrolling, packing and unpacking.
It seems then that monotony is the norm. Nothing could be further away. We witness a body geometry, an index of human kinetics, and hanging a hammock, stretching the rope or crossing a river are reasons for the photographer to synthesize life in the jungle and explore human plasticity at the same time.
In this mobile study of a wandering human group, Ríos examines the ornament and fashion. And that’s where the color become triggering. The monotony of the camouflage is always shaken by a chromatic detail, presenting a very Colombian way of life. It will be necessary to point out in his many portraits the introspection. Even in group images, it is common to find someone immersed in their own thoughts. The gaze lost in the distance of the people portrayed, reflects the hope, fears and anxieties that not only to the members of the FARC – today a political party – but to all of us, produces in the desired end of the war.
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